Legendary Twisted Sister singer Dee Snider was guest on BraveWords’ Streaming For Vengeance recently and we spoke about his fifth full-length album, Leave A Scar, which features a guest appearance from Cannibal Corpse’s George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher on the track “Time To Choose”. The legendary death metallers released their 1990 debut (Eaten Back To Life) roughly five years after Twisted Sister’s peak in the mid-80s. So, what did Dee know about that extreme scene and why invite Corpsegrinder to his party?

“I'll tell you a true story,” Snider begins. “In '93 I was doing my first radio show. I've been doing radio for a long time now, but I was doing a metal show, Metal Nation. So, I'm doing everything on the show, I'm engineering, I'm hosting, I'm doing the ads each week, I'm getting the records, I'm doing everything. And I get this album, Cannibal Corpse. And I put it on. And I'm reading the lyrics. I'm so mortified, I throw the thing in the garbage. I go, 'What the fuck is this dog shit?' That was a shock to the system. And a lot of very creative, very inventive, very great bands like the New York Dolls, I had the same reaction. I was so excited about the New York Dolls album, and when I first got it I put it on and I heard (David) Johansen screaming, I threw it across the room. I thought, 'That's garbage!'. So it took me a while to adjust and adapt, but that's because it was so new, it was groundbreaking at the time. A few of the oldsters have actually come to understand. My kids are all metal heads and they've kept me connected, kept me listening, take me to shows, and now I understand. I don't call it cookie monster vocals anymore. I understand. I hear words. And you couldn't hear anything back then, but now I understand it and I respect it and I appreciate it. And I was the one who said we should get George Fisher on this track. And Jamey Johnson said ‘Who's George Fisher?’  He's thinking I'm talking about some guy from like the ’70's or something, like 'Did he play bass in Free?', and I'm like 'Corpsegrinder!'. He goes 'OGD (he calls me OGD) - ODG man, you're always making it harder, always making it heavier.’ He's always pulling me back, and I'm always going 'More! More hard-core gang vocals'. So, please acknowledge that while l I had that initial reaction, I have obviously come to respect and appreciate it because I asked him to join me, and I didn't realize it was such a significant gesture because nobody from my generation even acknowledge it, but look down on it and make fun of it. They don't even think it has a place, and I do.”

BraveWords: It brought to my mind when Dimmu Borgir covered “Burn In Hell”. That song in Stay Hungry might have resonated to people who were buying Kill 'Em All and Show No Mercy at the time. But Dimmu did it with so much justice.

Snider: “Yeah, they did. And they introduced a whole new generation, a whole new audience. When Jamey (Jasta; producer) asked Corpsegrinder, Corpsegrinder was stunned because apparently he's a huge fan. When he was on Liquid Metal, he did a takeover and he played The Price. George Corpsegrinder Fisher played ‘The Price’. I told that to George and he said when he's down and he turns to Twisted Sister, Stay Hungry, all these songs to lift him up. So when Dimmu did that song and introduced a whole new crowd, it's funny because when I do it in Europe, I'll say, ‘The next song is by Dimmu Borgir’, it's kind of like Van Halen when they do ‘You Really Got Me’. Hey, this old guy is doing a Van Halen song! I appreciate that because we were a metal band. I am a metal fan. People who don't understand how I can be where I am today, Twisted Sister was a New York Dolls band, a glitter rock band playing Mott The Hoople, Bowie, T-Rex, they wanted to be the Dolls. I love that shit, but I also love Priest and Deep Purple and Zeppelin and Sabbath. So I came into a band that wanted to be a glitter band and I was like, 'cool, I'm down with that', but I also wanted us to have a metal influence and if you look through the history of ‘Under The Blade’, ‘You Can't Stop Rock n' Roll’, ‘Sin After Sin’, ‘Burn in Hell’, ‘Fire Still Burns’, it's very clear that we are metallic.”